This invention relates to a cheese stocker for temporarily storing cheeses doffed by a winder in a spinning mill.
In spinning mills, sometimes, winders are operated night and day and an exclusive-use cheese stocker is used for temporarily storing a large quantity of cheeses doffed by the winders. The storing of cheese by the cheese stocker not only results in the continuous provision of production performance of the winders but also is every effective in efficiently carrying out the packing work or the like in the subsequent steps.
The cheese stocker can take-in a predetermined number of cheeses to temporarily house them therein and can take them out as needed. As one example of the conventional apparatus, apparatus has been known in which cheeses are taken onto a cheese conveyor, and the cheese conveyor is temporarily stopped, after which a pair of plates disposed along opposite sides of the cheese conveyor are moved up and down to scoop-up and transfer the cheeses onto the pair of plates, and the cheeses are held on the plates and stored. The spacing between the plates is formed to be wider than the width of the cheese conveyor and narrower than the diameter of a cheese. If the plates are provided in multi-stage in a vertical direction, a storing quantity of cheeses can be increased. On the other hand, in taking-out cheeses, the plates are moved down to re-transfer the cheeses onto the cheese conveyor, after which the cheese conveyor is actuated to take them out.
In such a cheese stocker as described above, the control or management of the frame of the winder and kinds of the goods has been carried out by using the plates while being divided stage by stage.
According to the aforementioned prior art, the cheeses are loaded on the cheese conveyor in row and taken into the cheese stocker. That is, since the cheeses are loaded directly on the cheese conveyor, the surface of the cheeses was liable to be mechanically damaged. Furthermore, since the control of the frame of the winder and kinds of the goods depends on separate control by the plates and the plates need be relatively moved up and down along the opposite sides of the cheese conveyor, the cheeses are necessary to be stored orderly from the upper stage to the lower stage whereas the cheeses are necessary to be taken out orderly from the lower stage. Accordingly, there was a problem that the control of cheeses stored stage by stage is effected by unit of stage, only so-called prior-in and post-out operation can be done.